A number of mistakes escaped the scrupulous attention of the examiners in Matsec examination papers in various subjects, and this will be taken into consideration when the papers submitted by the students are being corrected, Education Minister Evarist Bartolo told Parliament.

Asked by Labour MP Michael Falzon on whether a mechanism is to be introduced to ensure that no mistakes are to be found in exam papers, Mr Bartolo gave a detailed explanation of the way exam papers are drawn up and how they are checked.

He said the system has been in place since 2002 and involved three phases.

The first phase is the drawing up of the paper by the examination board, which includes the points given for each question and a specification grid to explain how the questions reflect the syllabus.

In the second phase, the chairman of the examinations board passes on the draft paper to an independent third party who is responsible to see whether the questions contains mistakes or whether they are ambiguous. This third party must also check that the questions can be answered in the time allocated and are of the standard required, following which the paper is returned to the examinations board with relative suggestions and comments.

In the third phase, the papers are passed on to the Matsec Support Unit for the principal subject area officer and another official check to see that the papers conform with the syllabus and that the questions are clear.

For each phase there is a checklist to guide the people involved in the three phases, which needs to be completed and signed.

In spite of this scrutiny, mistakes can still occur in examination papers, and generally speaking this may be corrected during the exam without a huge effect on the students, Mr Bartolo said.

The errors that occurred this year include: in the business studies there was the word “care” instead of “cake”; in the computing exam one of the arrows was pointing in the wrong direction; in the Systems of Knowledge exam there was a difference in the Maltese and English versions, with the English version requesting students to answer “from classical to modern times” while the Maltese version called for the reverse. In this case, the examiners will accept both versions.

The Matsec board will try to avoid having mistakes in exam papers but, when this happens, any decisions taken always favour the student, Mr Bartolo said.